Viktoria (2014 Sundance capsule)

This film flew under a lot of festival-goers’ radar, perhaps because there’s not a huge audience clamoring for a 155-minute Bulgarian drama that follows a clinically depressed mother through communism’s stifling oppression and eventual fall. But the brave festival-goers who ventured to see it discovered a rich, emotional exploration of stunted spirits. Director Maya Vitkova recalls Tarkovsky with her deep sense of yearning and striking use of fantastical poetic imagery. Yet the film works equally well when it dips into the waters of absurd comedy, as a child grows up with an inflated ego after the country’s propaganda machine turns her birth abnormality into a cause for national celebration.